Develop Reference

If need to make unregistration before re-registration GCM?

I developing the application that use the GCM. As mentioned in the documentation, after the application update need to invalidate the existing registration ID and start the registration process again.
Does this mean that I need to make unregistration before making the new registration?

No, you don't have to unregister before registering again. In fact, in most cases, when you register again you will get the same Registration ID you had in your previous registration. By "invalidate the existing registration ID" they mean that after an application update, the app should clear the Registration ID it has stored locally and request a Registration ID from GCM again (by calling GoogleCloudMessaging.register).
If, however, you unregister and then register again, you increase the chances that GCM would assign the device a new Registration ID, which means you have to remove the old Registration ID from your server's DB (to avoid sending duplicate messages to the same device).

GCM Registration ID changed

I developed an application which used GCM technology and everything is OK.
I observed that the registration ID of the device changes after a period of time and this has caused a problem in my app because my app is dependent on the Reg ID.
So how I can get a fixed Reg ID for clients?

I read the 2 reasons over here when you GCM Registration Id might change:
You’ll need to re-register every device each time you update your
app.
You’ll also need to re-register a device if the version of Android it’s running has been updated
P.S: The below old answer's reference has been removed from Google's page, so might not be valid anymore
If you see the second point under the heading Enable GCM on Architectural Overview page, it says:
Note that Google may periodically refresh the registration ID, so you
should design your Android application with the understanding that the
com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION intent may be called
multiple times. Your Android application needs to be able to respond
accordingly.
So, for handling that you should have a Broadcast Listener which could handle com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION intent, which Google send to the app when it has to refresh the registration ID. The broadcast receiver will have the onReceive method with an Intent. From the intent you can get the Bundle using which you can extract the new registration ID from Google. You can save that and send it to the 3rd part server to replace your previous registered ID for that user.
Also you may see this answer on the question In GoogleCloudMessaging API, how to handle the renewal or expiration of registration ID?.
Discussion on Should applications call gcm.register() every seven days to ensure valid registration IDs? question might also be of some use.
Hope this helps you understand how to handle it.

The 'periodical' refresh never happened, and the registration refresh is not included in the new GCM library.
The only known cause for registration ID change is the old bug of apps getting unregistered automatically if they receive a message while getting upgraded. Until this bug is fixed apps still need to call register() after upgrade, and so far the registration ID may change in this case. Calling unregister() explicitly usually changes the registration ID too.
The suggestion/workaround is to generate your own random identifier, saved as a shared preference for example. On each app upgrade you can upload the identifier and the potentially new registration ID. This may also help tracking and debugging the upgrade and registration changes on server side.

How to stack or group Registration IDs while using GCM?

I just started to use Google Cloud Messaging and read about User Notifications.
According to this link, all the devices owned by a particular user will be notified at once.
In my case, a particular user is identified by his/her user_id and the database would look like this:
[user_id] [gcm_registration_id]
As per the demo, on the application side this registration_id is stored as persistent data.
What happens if the user uninstalls the app and the persistent data is gone?
Will I get the same Registration ID for the same App on the same device once the user re-installs the app?
Will Google invalidate these Registration IDs after some time?

will I get the same registration_id for the same app on the same
device once the user reinstalls the app?
YES. Reg id chnages in two cases. Either your app will register OR Google refreshes the Registration ID. SO until any one cases executes your are fine with old reg id.
By any chance google invalidates these registration_ids after some
time?
YES. Google refreshes the registration ID. GCM gives you the idea about handleing of updated registartion ID.
Handle updated id on client side
If the registration is successful, the GCM server broadcasts a com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION intent which gives the Android application a registration ID.
The Android application should store this ID for later use (for instance, to check on onCreate() if it is already registered). Note that Google may periodically refresh the registration ID, so you should design your Android application with the understanding that the com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION intent may be called multiple times. Your Android application needs to be able to respond accordingly.

Actually the answer you accepted is not entirely correct.
I tested the case of un-installing and re-installing an app on a device, and in some cases you could get a different registration ID.
There are two cases :
You install an app, register to GCM and get a registration ID.
You un-install app
Your server sends a few messages to that registration ID, until you get a NotRegistered error from GCM (I believe you'll get that error only from the 2nd message you send).
You re-install the app
You receive a new registration ID when app register to GCM
If you now send a message with the old registration ID, it will still work, but you'll get the new registration ID in the response as canonical registration ID.
You install an app, register to GCM and get a registration ID.
You un-install app
The server doesn't send anything to that registration ID while the app is un-installed.
You re-install the app
You receive the same registration ID when app registers to GCM

Multiple Notification is getting from (GCM)Google Notification Server?

I have multiple different deviceids in my database table pointing to same a device because google will send me different device id when a device reinstall/install. Due to which devices getting multiple notifications which is hurting me and my users very much. Is there is a way to tell google that only send one notification to single device? or is there a way to check the id is new or old before sending request? Anyone experience with this weird issue? BTW, I am using PushSharp/ASP.NET in backend.
Update: I am now relying on native device id. So, I will remove/replace the old registration ids from my database table where native device id is same.

I think you need to remove the device id from your database once you get unregistered error code.
Unregistered Device
An existing registration ID may cease to be valid in a number of scenarios, including:
If the application manually unregisters by issuing a com.google.android.c2dm.intent.UNREGISTER intent.
If the application is automatically unregistered, which can happen (but is not guaranteed) if the user uninstalls the application.
If the registration ID expires. Google might decide to refresh registration IDs.
If the application is updated but the new version does not have a broadcast receiver configured to receive com.google.android.c2dm.intent.RECEIVE intents.
For all these cases, you should remove this registration ID from the 3rd-party server and stop using it to send messages.
Happens when error code is NotRegistered.
I recommend you to handle error codes when you send a message to a device.
http://developer.android.com/google/gcm/gcm.html
Please read role of 3rd party server. You would get more details.

Best practices implementing C2DM registration

I'm developing an application that uses C2DM to receive push notifications. I've implemented the whole C2DM circuit (both client and server) and it's working fine.
Currently my applicacion has a button to bootstrap the C2DM registration, when receiving the registration id token from Google I call a webservice in my app server to associate the device with the registration id.
I'm going to implement authentication in my application and I have a few question related to the handling of the C2DM registration.
The client application (ie the Android one) will have a login screen as the first screen so the user can enter the credentials. As soon as the credentials get validated I'm planning on calling the C2DM registration so the user gets associated with a registration id token. Is this ok? In later executions of the application I will probably store the credentials or some sort of token so the user doesn't need to enter the credentials again, Should I also fire the C2DM registration when the application launches?
I'm aware that Google may eventually update the registration id. Is it a good practice to also update the registration id on a regular basis? If so, when should be appropiate? Does the registration id token expire?
What happens in the rare case of a desynchronization of the registration id between the client and the server (eg a new registration id arrives at the client, in the middle of that a new event is fired on the server with the old registration id, then the registration id arrives at the server)? Will Google handle this cases? Should my app server handle this cases?
What happens if the server is not reachable when a new registration id arrives from Google? Should I backoff and schedule an Alarm to try again?
Can you think of any other pitfalls with this?

1) I would fire the C2DM registration as soon as possible. Nothing in particular, but since the request is asynchronous, firing it up early will help me get the reg ID sooner. However, no need to fire the registration each time the app starts. Once is sufficient.
2) Whenever Google decides to update the reg ID it will send it to the device and you need to do the same steps you followed when you receive the reg id for the first time i.e. convey it to the server.
3 & 4) You may want to go through this documentation. It stresses the fact that you need to make it sure that you send the registration ID to your server and keep on trying. I assume here that if the reg ID is refreshed, and your server still has the old ID, it will not be able to send messages to the device. It will receive a 200OK with an Error Code of InvalidRegistration which means a (missing or) bad registration id.
5) Cannot comment much - would say that it depends on the design of your application. But one thing worth noting is that C2DM is still in Beta so expect things to be different in the long run.

Try to prompt the user with a choice of google accounts that are already on the phone. The http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/source/checkout shows this. Look at SetupActivity.java for getGoogleAccounts(), etc.